1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is in the field of telephony including call center services and pertains particularly to methods and apparatus for prioritizing workflow and transaction handling to improve handling time and overall proficiency of the call center.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
The present invention has particular application in call center technology, wherein voice calls, emails, text messages and other forms of communication events are received and routed to agents of the call center for conducting communication with the originators of the communication events. The term “call center” seems to imply that the communication events are all calls, but in state-of-the-art centers communication events of all sorts are handles, routed and engaged, including, but not limited to, voice calls, both connection-oriented and VoIP, text messaging, emails, chat sessions, and more.
In this specification, to be inclusive when referring to the multi-media communications in such a modern call center, the word “transaction” is used, and should be understood to include any and all sorts of communication interactions that may be managed, routed and engaged in the call center.
In the art of telephony, there are call centers that are contracted by different enterprises that function to service the customer base of the contracting enterprise. Some enterprises maintain their own in-house call center systems, but many enterprises contract out for such professional services.
A state-of-the-art call center may handle both analog and digital communications. Most call centers are enhanced using computer telephony integration (CTI). Many centers have direct Internet connection through a local network and practice Internet messaging and Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). A call center typically employs a number of agents that are charged with the responsibility of handling call center business for the contracted enterprise. Agents may have varying skills and performance ratings. Agents may operate from personal computerized stations, each comprising a computer and an associated telephone or telephony application.
Contact centers (CC) often experience peaks in work load where too many transactions come in and not enough agents are available to handle them. The quality of customer service performed by agents degrades at those peak times or periods. Contact centers may also experience trough periods where there are insufficient transactions coming in to keep all of the agents busy. During these periods agents may miss the opportunity for further leveraging existing transactions by up selling or cross selling products to the callers.
Therefore, what is clearly needed is a system that improves call center efficiency in transaction handling and quality of the transaction experience for customers. A system such as this will tend to alleviate solve the problems cited above.